


The Dark is Dark.

by LeftShark



Series: Peter Quill and his Ravager Family [5]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Space storms, he was Yondu's bro back in the day, mentions of J'son, peter being scared of the dark, peter's only 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 07:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4995916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeftShark/pseuds/LeftShark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's dark in here," Peter whimpers, clinging to Yondu. "I don't like the dark! It's...too dark."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dark is Dark.

**Author's Note:**

> this is just some random bullshit even ask me i just wanted to write something/practice writing techniques.
> 
> *looks off into the distance dramatically*  
> I am garbage but you seem to like me anyways

Peter hits the ground, a soft 'oof' emitting from his tiny body as it happens. The floor and the walls are rumbling, there's loud (and scary) noises, and he can't stand without being thrown over.

He hears Kraglin shout something about a storm, and that confuses the hell out of him. Storms in space? Didn't you have to have an atmosphere to have a storm?

He doesn't care much about the science behind storms, though. He's too busy sliding across the slick floor and trying to stand back up, and he's glad he's not out on one of the catwalks. The grated floors out there would scrape him up.

The entire ship rattles again and tilts sideways, and Peter tumbles over from where he'd just managed to push himself back upward. Around him, the Ravagers are moving quickly. It's not fair, Peter thinks, they're standing and moving about with only small wobbles, unlike Peter who's being tossed about. He feels like he's inside a giant salt shaker.

It only takes two seconds before he tumbles into someone's legs. A quick glance up and neon orange skin tells him that it's Sven. He reached his small hands up, and the Ravager hauls the boy up and helps him stead himself.

"You alright kid?"

Peter pauses for a moment. Is he alright?

"Um, yeah. I'm okay." He sways a bit as the ship shakes beneath his small feet, and a loud noise than can only be described by Peter as 'space thunder' echoes around the walls of the elector.

Once he steadies himself, he ducks away from Sven and sprints over and up the few steps on to the platform that holds the control console; and more importantly, the ship's captain.

"Storm's real bad, cap'n!" Someone shouts.

"Get someone down in the generator room, we're gonna need to switch that thing on soon!" Yondu shouts back, placing his hands down on the control panel to keep from swaying about every time the ship shook.

"The generator, sir?"

"The damned storm's gonna shut down our system. It's stronger than we thought. Now, I don't know about the rest of you heathens, but I ain't waitin that out in complete darkness!"

As soon as Peter's close enough, he throws himself at Yondu's legs and latches on like an octopus, nearly knocking the captain down.

"Peter--what the hell?!"

The boy doesn't answer. Instead, he pulls the flap of Yondu's trench coat around himself, burrows his face in the man's hip, and trembles as another bout of thunder echoes through the ship and the lights dim immensely.

Of course, Yondu thinks. Of course the kid'd be scared of storms and thunder. The kid's scared of everything. He's actually surprised that Peter's not bawling his big, green eyes out right now.

He places his hand on Peter's head, gently petting the soft hair in what he hopes is a soothing motion.

"Cap'n!" Kraglin shouts, stumbling in to the room. There's a bruise on his left cheek, he's bleeding from somewhere inside of his mouth, and he's cradling his right arm to his chest. "The generator's broken, needs fixin!"

"The hell happened to you, boy?" Yondu questions. Peter's still clinging on to him for dear life. It dawns on him that now he's got two kids to deal with; One of them that's been tossed 5 billion lightyears out of his comfort zone, and one who looks like he's been shoved through an engine and spit back out.

"Um, I fell," the teenager says, lightly rubbing at his face. "But the generator's broke and it's gonna take us a long time to fix..."

Yondu nods, and turns to Mason "Get some people down in the generator room! Fix the damn thing before the--"

As of on cue, the lights shut off and the room goes dark. The only source of light is a flash of lightning that flickers through the windshield, but it's gone as soon as it starts, and leaves the room in complete darkness again.

"--go!" He commands. Someone turns on a small flashlight and leads the others out of the room to fix the issue.

As he passes, Mason bumps his shoulder against Kraglin's, almost knocking the teen over. "Damn kid, you can't even do your own job right."

Kraglin huffs and moves away from him, placing a hand on the wall and using it to guide himself along the perimeter of the room and away from the door. Away from Mason. The guy is the definition of 'asshole' and all he's done is make Kraglin's life hard. Sometimes, he looks forward to the day that Mason dies. Just so a heavy weight could be lifted off his shoulders. Kraglin licks at the sharp teeth in his mouth, tasting the blood, and he realizes now that his bottom lip hurts. He must've bit it when he fell. 

"It's dark in here," Peter whimpers, clinging tighter to Yondu. "I don't like the dark. It's...too dark."

The captain tries to think of how to adapt to their current situation, but his brain is fogged with the feeling of fear. It's not his own, though. It's coming from Peter, and for some reason, he can't block it out. (And somewhere else in the back of his mind, he can feel anger. He knows it's coming from Kraglin. He gazes over in the direction where he can hear the teenager breathing.)

"You'll be alright in the dark, boy?" He asks.

Kraglin nods, but remembers Yondu can't see him. "Um, yeah? I mean...I ain't scared of the dark like Peter is."

"Hey!" The boy says, glaring in the direction of Kraglin's voice. "I ain't afraid of the dark! I just--I don't like it!"

"I never asked either of you if you were scared," grumbles Yondy as he detaches Peter from his side. He hefts the boy up in to his arms and Peter wastes no time clinging on to him again. "Hang in there, kid."

Peter only nods and holds on tighter as Yondu begins to move.

And then it feels funny. Strange, actually. Peter's not upright anymore. Instead, he's practically laying on top of Yondu.

"Wait!" He says, lifting his head from where it was tucked into the crook of the captain's neck. "Are you crawling on the ceiling!?"

"Well...last time I checked, you couldn't trip and fall by scaling the ceiling." It was also way cooler to crawl across the ceiling like a sloth, no matter what the situation. (And having a little kid cling to you only made the experience even more sloth-like...unfortunately, no one on the elector knew what the hell a sloth was, besides Peter.)

"You can do that?"

"I can do a lot of things."

That's Peter's cue to shut up already. And he does. He lays his head on the front of Yondu's shoulder.

His mind wanders off to an old memory from a few years ago.

He was 5 years old. He was in the pet store with his mom and grandpa, gazing upon all the multi colored fish in many tanks that stretched across an entire wall. Now, that he was older, he understood why they had taken him to the pet store to select a new pet. Their dog, Axel, was old already. His breed, the Bernese Mountain Dog, didn't have a very long life span. Those kinds of dogs were lucky if they lived up to 9 years. He was already a few years old when Peter was born. Axel had been Peter's second best friend (next to Meredith), and he had been Peter's playmate since Peter could walk. He wouldn't be around much longer, and Mom and Grandpa wanted to distract Peter with a new pet so he wouldn't be so upset when Axel passed.

"Look, Peter," Grandpa had said, picking the small child up so he could peer inside of a glass tank.

"I don't see anything! Just sand and leaves!" Peter pouted.

"Look on the ceiling of the tank," Grandpa said, and Peter's eyes darted upward.

There, clinging to the ceiling, had been a bright, green chameleon. He moved slowly, odd-shaped hands clasping at the bars above him.

"His eyes look funny," the five year old had commented. "And he's weird..."

 

"You're a lizard," Peter says, breaking the silence and lifting his head again.

"A what?" Yondu asks, though he's more focused on trying not to fall.

"Nevermind--its a Terran thing."

"Sure..."

After a few moments, Yondu drops down to the floor. Peter unclings himself and stands beside Yondu, one hand clutching the leather jacket.

"Are we by your room?" Peter asks, leaning against Yondu. "How're we gonna get the door open?"

"Force," says Yondu as he blindly wedges his fingers into the small space where the door almost meets the wall and begins to pull, forcing the door to slide open. "Stay here. I won't take long."

"Um, okay?" Peter isn't too sure what Yondu is up to, but he untangles his fingers from the leather and let's Yondu move away.

The Captain trudges into the large room and directly to the storage drawers on the far end. It's a miracle he doesn't step on or trip over anything (sometimes, he is not a neat person.) He breaks the lock on the top one and rummages around until his hand brushes over a solid cube. "Got it!" He announces to himself, and snatches the cube out of the drawer.

He never planned to give this to Peter--Hell, he wasn't even supposed to take it out of the drawer. It was dangerous and he almost died AND he lost a good friend while acquiring and re-acquiring it. It was like a bad luck charm. Once someone found out he had it, they'd probably come after him. But the power'll be down for hours, and it takes the generator a long time to be fixed as it is, but the crew has to do it in the dark now...this'll keep Peter entertained as well as quiet.

He steps out of the room, stopping short of running in to Peter.

"Gimme you hand, boy."

"Uh?" Peter juts his arm out, shoving his small hand right in to Yondu.

The Centuarian takes the boy's wrist and moves it upward, pressing it to the cube in is hands. At the boys touch, the designs on the faces of the cube behind to glow. The boy stares up in awe at it, then taps his hand against the top of the cube. From a small hole in the top, a hologram ejects, spreading out in a globe-shaped scatter of stars.

"What is..?"

"It's, uh...it's a nightlight." He hands the cube to Peter, who takes it in both hands and continues to stare at it, mesmerized. It was actually a map, but Peter didn't need to know that.

"Really?"

"Yeah. The good thing about it...'s that only you can turn it on. Nobody else."

 

"Oooh," Peter lifts a hand and makes swiping motions at the air, which spins the hologram around. "I like!"

Yondu grins, "Of course ya do." He picks Peter up and walks back to the control room. Now that he can can actually see, thanks to the cube, there's no need for wall-crawling.

 

 

"You gave him that?" Kraglin asks, watching as Peter sits cross legged on the floor, playing with the map and making it spin. It's just the three of them in the room.

"Well, he ain't crying and whining about the dark anymore."

"Yeah," Kraglin says. "But isn't that thing bad?" He turns to face Yondu. The man is also watching Peter.

He knows where Yondu got the cube from.

"Not as bad as you-know-who."

And Kraglin does; He knows J'Son. Quite well, actually.

He had been Yondu's right hand man years ago. J'Son held a higher rank among the Ravagers than Horuz did, and that was saying something, status-wise, considering Horuz was the second Ravager to ever exist (Yondu being the first), he was like Yondu's soul-buddy, one of the only people who ever fully understood Yondu. J'son was made for the team, everything he did was just so right and perfect.

(He also claimed to hate children, but got along surprisingly well with Kraglin. He was like the fun uncle Kraglin didn't know he wanted until he was actually there.)

And then he turned out to be a traitorous snake. That was a major shock to everyone.

He tried to steal from Yondu and kill him in the process. Luckily, he ja failed and Yondu had gotten back what J'son had tried to steal, but it didn't end so well for the pair. Instead, it ended in an angry dog-fight, leaving J'son forever lost (or so they had thought), and Yondu angry at the universe. (Who wouldn't be upset if their Bromeo turned out to be a traitor?) And the only good thing to come from that was, well, Peter.

Yondu, and the rest of the team, had no problem quickly erasing all good memories of J'son from their brains. Hell, Yondu even vowed to kill him if they crossed paths (which turned out to be an empty threat)

"Are you gonna tell him what it is?"

"Nah," Yondu shakes his head. "Ain't got no use for it, and it's taking up space in my room. 'Sides, it's much more safer with Quill usin' it to see in the dark."

That, Kraglin knows, is true. It belongs to Peter, now. And anyone out there who wanted it would have to forcefully take it from him; Which meant that they'd also have to put up with a screeching Terran child who never seemed to run out of energy and would scream until their ears bled. They would also have to go through an army of Ravagers who would protect Peter with their lives. And it also just happened to be an unofficial, galaxy-wide rule that anyone who harms a child in any way was a bad person. Children were precious little things that needed to be protected at all costs. Stealing from them was wrong, hurting them was wrong--even looking that them the wrong way could be considered wrong in some places. 

He's not sure how, but it makes sense; The cube really is safer with Peter.  
And it also looks really cool, he's a tad bit jealous. He almost wishes he had a "nightlight" that projected stars when he was a little kid. Instead, he had a window. A window that he couldn't see out of unless he stood up on the tips of his toes.

 

"You were pissed earlier," Yondu finally turns to look at him.

"It's Mason's fault," Kraglin says, sourly. "Why is he even here? I mean--Why does he exist, and why do I even have to breathe the same air as him?!"

"He's…not the ideal type of guy, I know. But he's crew, and he's been crew since before you was born."

"I know."

"And he's--"

"An asshole. We don't like each other and I sure as hell know that you don't like him, why not get rid of him and save everyone some trouble, cap?"

"It ain't as simple as that, Krag. Crew is crew, just because you don't like someone doesn't mean you can get rid of 'em."

"Well there's nothing stopping either of us from putting a bullet in his head, y'know. Or anyone, for that matter. It's easier than reasoning with them."

"That's...It's..." Yondu can't seem to figure out what he wants to say. Kraglin, the kid who hardly ever opens his mouth to say anything, is speaking so easily of killing anyone who would cause some sort of complication. "You've grown up way too fast," he says, finally. "'S kinda hard not to see you as the skinny little kid who came runnin to greet us as soon as we stepped on the ship after missions."

"That's Peter's job, now."

"Yeah, but it ain't the same."

The ship rattles again and Peter scrambles over to wedge himself between the pair.

"Speaking of the devil," Kraglin says, looking down at Peter who happily held the cube up.

"Look, it's really cool! It glows and makes stars!"

"Yep," the teenager nods, looking at the cube in Peter's small hands. "Very cool."

Perhaps a few hours in the dark won't be so bad…

**Author's Note:**

> I like the idea of J'son and Yondu being friends back in the day.  
> They could've been those best friend who always get mistaken for a couple when they're together because their bromance is v strong.  
> (Maybe a bit of puppy love could be tossed in there, idk)
> 
> Ew look at me im like subtly shipping those two assholes together ahahaa why am I doing this  
> that's such a trashy ship  
> it doesn't even make sense but  
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Tbh I bet if I wrote a well written story about them, it would make someone out there ship them. (I mean, I always get someone there who's all "I didn't ship this until I read this story!" Y'know?) like, maybe I can make someone ship that trash omg
> 
> Anyways, Mason's character will be better explained when I write Kraglin's backstory.
> 
> In the next one-shot; Peter finds a puppy!


End file.
